Communication in Global Organizational Learning

At the base of all theories concerning organizational learning, whether from the information processing perspective (e.g. Huber, 1991) or the social construction perspective (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Cook and Yanow, 1993), lies the assumption that communication must occur in order for knowledge to be created or disseminated. When examining organizational learning in MNCs, it is particularly important to examine the impact of culture on communication because of the need to share knowledge across individuals and groups located in highly divergent cultural environments. Regardless of the type of knowledge to be transferred (tacit versus explicit; operational versus strategic) or the manner of transfer (archival versus verbal; experiential versus cognitive), the communication process will be affected by culture. If MNCs can fully leverage all the knowledge that they have within their global networks, they will greatly enhance their ability to respond to environmental changes and increase performance (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 2000). Therefore, the impact of intercultural communication on knowledge transfer merits attention.

Organizational learning theorists usually include within their definitions of the phenomenon the capability of organizations not only to create new knowledge, but also to transfer it (Senge, 1990; Garvin, 1993; Huber, 1991). Huber calls this ‘information distribution,’ and observes that it is ‘a determinant of both the occurrence and breadth of organizational learning’ (1991: 100). In other words, in order for organizations to learn, they must first have access to the knowledge that is available within the company. He goes on to observe the potential impediments to the effective distribution of knowledge in organizations, which include such factors as the perception of personal characteristics of the receiver (e.g. power and status), the workload of the sender, and the number of sequential links in the communication chain linking the sender and the receiver (Huber, 1991: 101). Thus, Huber (1991) makes salient the role of communication in information and knowledge transfer, but he does not address the potential barriers represented by differences in ethnic or national cultural patterns of communication.

National or ethnic cultural background of individuals has long been recognized as a major influence on communication, and hence it is reasonable to expect that knowledge transfer within MNCs will be affected by national culture. However, it should be noted that the effects of large cultural distance are complex (Chakrabarti, Gupta-Mukherjee, and Jayaraman, 2009; Reus and Lamont, 2009). There are many definitions of national culture—around 200 of them (Adler, 2002). We have chosen to use a representative definition:

the shared beliefs, values, and practices of a group of people. A group’s culture includes the language or languages used by group members as well as the norms and rules about how behavior can appropriately be displayed and how it should be understood.

(O’Hair, Friedrich, Wiemann, and Wiemann, 1997: 9).

Communication of knowledge in MNCs can occur between different types of actors—between individuals, between individuals and groups, and among groups, internally or externally, nationally or internationally. In this chapter, we will focus on the internal transfer of knowledge among these various actors. While the sharing of knowledge with the external environment may be of some importance to business success, the major learning that the MNC can capture and turn into a distinctive competence (Barney, 1991) is most likely to be internal. Illustrations of such internal learning are knowledge about new markets, improvements in business processes, recent competitor behavior and relevant technological innovations.

Individuals are usually seen as the basis of learning within organizations (Inkpen and Dinur, 1998; Kim, 1993; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). ‘The prime movers in the process of organizational knowledge creation are the individual members of an organization’ (Nonaka, 1994: 17). Individuals hold internal images of how the world works. These are called ‘mental models.’ The mental models arbitrate what new information we acquire, retain, use, and delete, but most important, ‘they not only help us make sense of the world we see, they can also restrict our understanding to that which makes sense within the mental model’ (Kim, 1993: 39). Through learning gathered by interaction with the environment, an individual’s mental model changes, and these changes become embedded in the organization’s mental model. ‘The cycles of individual learning affect learning at the organizational level through their influence on the organization’s shared mental models’ (Kim, 1993: 43). Individual learning is combined, amplified, and changed into group mental models in the intermediate step of group learning, as emphasized by Nonaka (1994) and Inkpen and Crossan (1995). The process of embedding the individual’s new mental model into the organization is never simple. Much knowledge, particularly tacit knowledge, can be lost in the process due to lack of connections between people or parts of the organizational structure.

Organizations as a whole, as well as their sub-units, are thus also important learners and communicators (Inkpen and Crossan, 1995; Kim, 1993). Organizations can be seen as interpretation systems (Daft and Weick, 1984; Inkpen and Crossan, 1995) that scan the environment, interpret events and develop concepts to guide future action. The mental models that the organization collectively holds help it in decision making through the schemas, scripts, and causal maps that result from the mental models. Very often this learning is embedded in the knowledge structure of the top management team and in the organizational structures and processes they create based on their shared mental models (Kim, 1993). The organization communicates its mental models internally through established standard operating procedures, organizational culture, assumptions, artifacts, and overt behavior rules that characterize the organization (Kim, 1993). Thus, communication becomes a key factor both in how the organization learns from the individuals within it and how it communicates its mental models to these same individuals.

Based on this framework of the interdependent and interactive nature of individual and organizational learning, we will examine the impact of intercultural communication on knowledge transfer. Before proceeding, however, the distinction between the mental models of individuals and organizations on the one hand, and national culture on the other, warrants clarification. While national culture can be seen as a type of mental model, it is a much broader and more deeply rooted ‘way of seeing the world.’ In this chapter, we will make the distinction that the term ‘mental model’ refers to a narrower, organizationally relevant perspective that focuses on an image or perception of what makes the organization successful. National culture refers to the broader, life-encompassing group influenced mental picture that people acquire early in life from membership in a particular ethnic group or culture.